Word: horvath
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...CHILD OF OUR TIME-Odon von Horvath-Dial...
When Odon von Horvath was killed in Paris last year-a falling chestnut tree struck him as he sauntered along the Champs Elysees-he had written a prize play, two short novels, The Age of the Fish and A Child of Our Time. These had given him a European reputation as one of the most gifted German writers of his generation. That reputation was confirmed by most U. S. critics last February with the English translation of The Age of the Fish, a poetic, Dostoevskian Goodbye, Mr. Chips, in which a young German schoolmaster discovers the maggots in Nazi morality...
Over the rest of the story hangs a question mark that may decide von Horvath's insight as a novelist of his time: How prophetic is the lance-corporal's gradual disillusionment with the Nazi creed? First crack in his faith comes during an undeclared war on "a weak, incompetent nation, with a deplorable system of government." Wounded and permanently disabled while trying to save his captain under machine-gun fire, he discovers that the captain deliberately committed suicide in preference to looting, shooting prisoners, bombing women, children, wounded. When Nazi indifference to individuals robs...
Afterwards, young von Horvath tossed his literary chestnuts into the hot ashes...
...long after writing this book, Odon von Horvath was walking along the Champs Elysees in Paris. The usual crowd was all around him, straining against a high wind. It was June, and the trees were gay and green with their new foliage-except for one huge, dying chestnut tree. A sudden gust swept against it. It tottered, cracked, started to fall. Von Horvath, preoccupied, did not hear the people scream as he walked into its shadow. The dead tree crushed him dead, and Odon von Horvath had his wish...